Nicolas Flamel
Nicolas Flame is world famous and is easily one of the biggest names and faces associated with the Hermetic Society. All this because he is one of the precious few Alchemists who is widely believed to have succeeded in creating an actual, lasting Elixir of Life. Accordingly, he is immortal and has lived for several centuries already. Facts: -Despite his reputation as a Master Alchemist, Nicolas Flamel's personal origins are surprisingly humble. He began his life as a simple book seller in one of the Northern districts of the city of Paris. -Flamel's life took a turn for the extraordinary when, late one night, he was awoken by the vision of an unidentified angel who foretold Flamel that he would go on to do great things. The angel warned Flamel to be on the lookout for a very special book that would cross his path. -That book arrived days later when, while dealing with a customer who was trying to sell Flamel some books, he presented Flamel with the same book that he had seen in the angelic vision. Flamel bought it immediately, then closed his shop and went straight home. -Flamel was mystified by the contents of the book, most of which were arcane-seeming and written in some kind of cipher. It included drawings of technical details, tools, chemicals and layouts of what appeared to be an experimental laboratory. The preface of the book, which had been written in Greek, proclaimed it to bear ancient wisdom dating back to Abraham himself. -Unfortunately, while Flamel had some experience in codes, he was completely unable to crack the book's cipher. -Flamel tracked down several local Alchemists within Paris and showed them the book. They told him they could not crack the code completely, since different Alchemist's used different codes, but they did recognize the work as being based on Hebrew. -This led Flamel to the nearest, major center of Jewish learning in Europe which was in Spain. He told his friends and family that he was going on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Santiago de Compostella, but in reality he sought Jewish scholars who could hopefully break the cipher of the mysterious book once and for all. -Flamel did meet up with Jewish scholars, and after no small amount of fuss on his part, Flamel finally managed to learn the contents of the book. He came across a Jewish converso (a Jew who had pretended to convert to Roman Catholicism which was the native religion of Spain at that time) who was himself an accomplished Alchemist. -The Jewish converso recognized the book immediately and rejoiced, telling Flamel that it was a perfect copy of one of the original plans for how to create a real Elixir of Life! -Flamel convinced the converso to journey with him back to France, but, tragically, the old man died en route, and Flamel feared that his one and only chance at immortality was over. Thankfully, Flamel's background as a Scribe payed off, and he was able to use what little he had learned from the old man to learn the rest of the book's language and meaning. -At some later point in Flamel's life, he succeeded in creating an Elixir of Life and gained biological immortality. -Flamel would go on to become one of the greatest Alchemists of the last thousand years. He became a leader for the Hermetic Society throughout Europe, and many, many works on Alchemy and the arcane are attributed to him. References: -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Flamel Category:Codex Category:Hermetic Society Category:Priory Of Sion